A Teen Girl Was Raped, and It Was Heartbreaking; But What Happened Next is Infuriating

It is perhaps every parent’s worth nightmare: hearing that their daughter was raped. And for one 16-year-old girl, that horror became a reality for her when she was date-raped. What makes her story even more horrific is that she had no idea what had happened until pictures and video of the assault went viral on Twitter, with people actually mocking the victim.

Jada accepted an invitation to party at a friend of a friend’s house, and that’s where she says she was drugged and raped.

“I had no control,” said Jada. “I didn’t tell anyone to take my clothes off and do what they did to me.”

Jada said the teenage boy hosting the gathering offered her a drink of punch. She believes he spiked it with a drug. She claims she passed out and had no clue about what had happened until disturbing tweets, pictures and videos started to appear on social media.

On Twitter, #Jadapose was used to tag the taunting tweets and video about the alleged assault. According to Topsy, a Twitter analytics tool, the hashtag was used over 3,000 times — 500 times in under a half an hour of the first #Jadapose tweet being sent. What is even more infuriating, is that it took over five hours before the first user voiced their disapproval, as reported by the Washington Post.

… What does is say about our society that thousands of people mock an innocent girl who has just been a victim of rape instead of offering to help, or at least shaming those who took part in such a dehumanizing act?

Apparently, it isn’t enough for Jada to have been physically assaulted; these horrible people have to ensure that she’s reminded of it thousands of times as images of her, unconscious and half naked, are shared and copied and laughed at. The only good thing to come out of this story is the thousands of people who have now taken over the hashtag #jadapose, using it to shame the people mocking Jada, and to show their support for her, reminding us that our society is, at least for now, not totally lost.